Calibre locks entire machine for 1-2 mins on first startup

[cybmole]

that is good work,:seem to have disproved that DLL loading is causing this. Are you running with splash screen enabled or disabled, and is your freeze coming before the splash, like other have reported ?

is your calibre program and you library both on your system drive and do you have any remote network drives or portable drives linked ?

[JSWolf]

Has anyone actually tried my suggestion of starting in safe mode with networking to see if the freezing stops?

Originally Posted by cybmole

that is good work,:seem to have disproved that DLL loading is causing this. Are you running with splash screen enabled or disabled, and is your freeze coming before the splash, like other have reported ?

is your calibre program and you library both on your system drive and do you have any remote network drives or portable drives linked ?

Thanks. Yes, the splash screen is disabled (although there is a flashing quick larger screen display just before the main screen comes out). I am not sure where to enable/disable it.

No. The program is on my system drive, and the (empty) library on my 'main data' disk (partition) (from a 1 Tb unit)

I do have a 2.5 Tb USB 3 unit permanently connected, but the problem
existed before I use it. No remote network unit. The problem do not change if the network is live or disconnected, I just do not get the 'update ready' in the second case.

Note that on my Eeepc (no problem), the main program is NOT on the system
disk, but probably some parts are there by design. This so because it is only
a 4 Tb unit, to small for the applications to be there.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Has anyone actually tried my suggestion of starting in safe mode with networking to see if the freezing stops?

Why would anyone ever want to do something as ridiculous as follow the official troubleshooting instructions?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Why would anyone ever want to do something as ridiculous as follow the official troubleshooting instructions?

Because there's always a good chance it's something that starts with Windows that's causing the problem and by running in safe mode, you can either find out something running on Windows start up is the problem or that's not the problem and something else is wrong. It's a simple thing to do and could possibly save a lot hassle trying to fix the problem.

[theducks]

I would like to see the specs on these machines.
For this test, I waited for other Boot time Start Up tasks to complete (little disk activity showing. This phase alone can take many minutes to happen.).

I define System unresponsive as failure of the mouse to move or very jerky

My 2 W7 system did not exhibit issues on First Calibre Start after a boot.

W7pro (x64) SP1 Intel Core duo 3.06GHz 8GB Ram

W7hp (x64) SP1 AMD Turion II 2.4GHz 3G Ram

[eschwartz]

11-year-old laptop, Intel Celeron, 2 GB RAM running Arch Linux.

I have seen the calibre GUI freeze (during large operations). Never seen it lock up the rest of my computer, except for that time when I accidentally tried converting several hundred books a once, which filled up my RAM with the temporary files (linux usually is setup to use a tmpfs for $TEMP) and brought the system to its knees. I've gotten more careful.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by theducks

I would like to see the specs on these machines.
For this test, I waited for other Boot time Start Up tasks to complete (little disk activity showing. This phase alone can take many minutes to happen.).

I define System unresponsive as failure of the mouse to move or very jerky

My 2 W7 system did not exhibit issues on First Calibre Start after a boot.

W7pro (x64) SP1 Intel Core duo 3.06GHz 8GB Ram

W7hp (x64) SP1 AMD Turion II 2.4GHz 3G Ram

specs, configs, OS is all good info to have

we are also told in at least one post that the freeze happens on 1st time calibre run after reboot, even if there was say 1 hour gap between those 2 events

So far it seems to be, not AV, not DLLs, not networked drives, not splash screen, not happening in XP, not specific books in library, and not start-up per se.

[ oh, and not on my PC, thankfully ]

maybe it IS time to try safe mode as we're running out of suspects

but hey, windows 10 is coming to save us all, or to be the new scapegoat, in just a few weeks time

[theducks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

11-year-old laptop, Intel Celeron, 2 GB RAM running Arch Linux.

I have seen the calibre GUI freeze (during large operations). Never seen it lock up the rest of my computer, except for that time when I accidentally tried converting several hundred books a once, which filled up my RAM with the temporary files (linux usually is setup to use a tmpfs for $TEMP) and brought the system to its knees. I've gotten more careful.

I thought this was only a W7 issue.

I don't see it on my XP (Calibre 2.0) P4 2.4GHz 2G Ram
nor on Linux (Mint). It may be slow, but does not make the system totally unresponsive

[eschwartz]

Ah -- just providing contrast and a small .
I don't believe the issue is hardware specs.

(With a sideline into random anecdotes.)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Ah -- just providing contrast and a small .
I don't believe the issue is hardware specs.

(With a sideline into random anecdotes.)

I am voting for either HW (minimal allowed?) or something on the Path

My other laptop (celeron) had a weird USB (interrupt flooding?) problem that would slowly get worse as boot session runtime increased. Cold=OK, longer run (a few hours)=bad

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hi Kovid,

I only have a single Calibre installation, and have tried adding both the "calibre.exe" and the entire Calibre installation folder to the exclusions list.

I'm using Microsoft Security Essentials. What I did was as follows:
1. Double click the MSE icon in the system tray.
2. Go to the "Settings" tab.
3. Select the "Excluded files and locations" item.
4. Add both the Calibre folder and the "calibre.exe" application to the list of exclusions.

If anyone can advise what else needs doing to solve this problem I'd be grateful.

Thanks.

It may or may not be related to your Calibre problem (probably is not...) but do yourself a BIG favor and get a better antivirus solution. MSE was pretty good a few years ago, but MS has stopped emphasizing it and it has become no better than mediocre. You can find much better free antivirus easily (look at the reviews in PC Magazine, etc.)

Hello.
I may be late in the thread, but I come back to the question of the splash screen. I found out where to set it, and it definitely comes AFTER the freeze.

I may try the 'safe mode' test, if ever I found out how to !

I may add that the 'Windows task manager' (if that its name) also completely freeze for a good minute at first Calibre start.

I may be wrong, but this is not a normal situation. I worked in assembly langage on a system 'real time' managing up to 48 terminals. There was a specific rule to obey when 'freezing' the system. You had to do it for some MILLISECONDS from time to time, to access data that could be changed by another process while you wanted to change it. If both were allowed, result could be catastrophic. So you 'lock' what was called 'interupt', set a flag saying 'this stuf is totaly reserved by me', and unlock the stuff. Then you do it back when finished, else everything will also die.

The same thing must exist in Win, to change things in a directory, or to manage multiple core running.

Anyway no other program I use do that freezing for more than 2 to 5 seconds.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre is pure user mode code, it cannot freeze your entire system, even if it wanted to. Only things running in kernel mode can do that, and calibre includes no such code.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

calibre is pure user mode code, it cannot freeze your entire system, even if it wanted to. Only things running in kernel mode can do that, and calibre includes no such code.

I'am glad to know this is impossible. It DOES uses something that is not usual in the system, though.

Using Msconfig, I started in SAFE MODE. (Alas, that will fuck up all my services exclusions...)

No dice. All services stopped, just 'Task manager' running, start of Calibre freezes all thins (including the clock) for a good minute.

Well back to set up everything right...